Reducing Guard presence on border makes sense

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NEW RULES: The W.A. Parish Power Plant in Fort Bend County was the 10th-largest polluter in the nation in 2010.

In 2012, the Obama administration will continue its efforts to make our Southwest border safer than ever by redeploying assets away from the inefficient placement of National Guard troops to increased technology and surveillance.

At a cost of about $10 million a month, the deployment of the Guard at the border never made fiscal sense. In addition, it thrust 1,200 Guard troops into an immigration-enforcement role that strays far from their core mission.

Guard troops have been trained for combat, not to deal with civil immigration laws. Yet on the border, the Guard is allowed to serve only in a supporting role as eyes and ears. They are armed only for self-defense, and if they notice anything amiss, they are empowered only to report it to Border Patrol agents.

Don't worry, Congress is still spending gobs of taxpayer dollars on border security. The appropriations bill Congress passed last week showers Customs and Border Protection with $11.7 billion for Fiscal Year 2012, an increase of $362 million over last year's level. The bill maintains funding for a record 21,400 Border Patrol agents stationed along the border.

In addition, the Department of Defense will spend $60 million beefing up aerial security by March 1, 2012, when the National Guard's presence will be scaled back to 300 troops.

Arguably, 300 is still too many. The National Guard's deployment began as a temporary measure - all 1,200 troops were originally scheduled to withdraw on June 30, 2011. Then, quietly, the administration extended the deployment by three months, and then by another three.

The overall price tag for 1,200 troops stands at about $160 million and counting, or about $96,000 per soldier, per year. When a Washington Post reporter describes National Guard troops as a combination of "a kind of neighborhood watch with M-16s" and "clerks in camouflage," one has to ask whether or not this is a good use of our military resources.

The border that troops, aircraft, drones and technology survey is more secure than ever. The number of illegal crossings at the border has dropped to historic lows, with apprehensions - "a key indicator of illegal immigration," as Homeland Security points out - down 80 percent between 2000 and 2011.

Homeland security policy should not be fueled by politics and sloganeering. Instead of implementing practical, fiscally responsible immigration solutions, elected officials and candidates have worked to curry favor by calling for more "boots on the ground" at the border. We should expect better.

Today, as Americans demand that our government spend less and spend more wisely, we cannot simultaneously ask that it continue to blindly throw money at a perceived problem. A basic cost-benefit analysis of border enforcement resources shows that we do not need the National Guard at the border.

What we do need is a functioning immigration system, one that prioritizes enforcement targets and reforms our outdated admission system to facilitate immigration through legal channels.

Staggering costs and the fading impact of the deployment should further encourage leaders in Washington to adjust enforcement priorities and look for smarter ways to use limited and valuable resources. Drawing down the National Guard's border presence and replacing it with aerial surveillance is a small first step.